Social Media

Mahalo Finally Growing?

It would seem that Mahalo is finally getting some growth, no matter how minuscule. Over at HitWise, they're showing off a graph that Mahalo grew to an astounding .02% of all search engine traffic, an increase of 53% over their previous share , compared to Google's 55.52% share. In other words: If you say Mahalo to most people, they'll ask if you've been to Hawaii, not something about Internet searches.

This does seem connected to the release of Wikia Search. While the new search engine, from the makers of Wikipedia, gets some immediate cachè from it's association with the famous encyclopedia, it should not have that broad of an effect. As people check it out and see it is a "human powered search", they are probably turning to other search engines to learn what that means. And what do you think they come across as a result?

Yep. Mahalo.

The HitWise article even states that 76% of Mahalo's traffic last week was from other search engines. The real test will be to see if the oddly named search engine can keep any of its new visitors over the long term, or if this "Wikipdia effect" will quickly wear off, putting Mahalo right back where it was a few months ago.

The most interesting tidbit of info to come out seems to be the break down of it's users by age. Mahalo is skewing incredibey young, and I think that's because it is "human powered". Those of us who are old, and hence want to get things done in a hurry, want to run in, get as concise a search result as possible, and get out. Playing around is not something we have time, nor patience for. But we need to ask the question, can a young audience maintain a site such as Mahalo? Yes, it has kept entities such as MySpce afloat, but a search engine is a much different creature.

Only time will tell if any of these "human powered' sites will make a lasting impression on the Internet, or just be another, long forgotten, buzz word some marketers thought sounded catchy.

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